Two astronauts stuck at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday welcomed the SpaceX capsule that will shuttle them home from a longer-than-anticipated mission. The big picture: NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams had to extend their stay by months after technical issues prevented them from returning home aboard the Boeing Starliner craft that brought them there.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov boarded the ISS shortly after the Dragon capsule docked at the station at 2130 GMT, NASA said in a post on X. The SpaceX Crew-9 mission was supposed to transport four astronauts to the ISS until two empty seats had to be opened up for Wilmore and Williams after the Boeing Starliner capsule they arrived on in June was deemed unfit to return them to Earth.